[Fanfic, 100% OJ] Sultry

Genre: Slice of Life

Length: 2156 words

B/D: The style of this one may be a bit janky, because I wasn't originally intending to post it -- it was a just-for-me story. But then I accidentally put development in there, and also the Sora & Sham cuties pack came out and I wanted to make a story for that, so I ended up hurrying this one.

“Nath, you’re flushed. Are you okay?”

Sham presses a hand against her forehead, and her palm feels blissfully cool by comparison. Outside, the weather is outrageously hot, the kind of rich, clingy heat that wraps itself around you and makes you long for escape. In the gym, it’s even worse; Nath is only wearing a pair of shorts and a vest top, but it feels like she’s huddled up in a parka. In the corridor, vending machines hum enticingly, and every so often Sora or Sham will go out to feed their change to them. Earlier, they were fighting over the privilege. Sora wants to try all the different isotonic glucose drinks. Sham just loves vending machines in a way that is slightly baffling.

But for all her oddities, the idol has something that none of Nath’s other friends seem to have: the ability, or the willingness, to open herself emotionally at any moment. Half a minute ago, she was laughing and giggling; now her manner is almost motherly as she gently wipes Nath’s forehead with a damp towel.

“Sora, I don’t think she’s well. We should get her home…”

Leaning back against the weight machine, Nath says nothing. Sham is wrong and she is right; she wants to go home, but not because she’s ill.

“Let me see.” Sora’s voice is not the voice of a woman concerned for her friend’s well-being. She leans in and presses her brow against Nath’s, her eyes wide open and watchful. For just a moment, her face takes up Nath’s entire world; it is oddly private, even though Sham is only a few feet away. The scent of green apple lingers in her hair. “I think,” she pronounces, after a moment that seems eternal, “she’s fine. Nath’s just enjoying the workout.”

Her interest apparently lost, she returns to the kettlebells. Like Sham, she’s wrong and right at the same time. To be honest, the exercise isn’t really doing anything for Nath. Most of it is targeted for her arm muscles, which, of course, don’t exist. But she’d gotten an excited call from her lab geeks telling her they had made a breakthrough, based on the technology Sham lent them; the new arms, they promised, would be stronger, more responsive, and have no compatibility issues. They would even be molded to more closely fit her body shape, unlike the slightly twiggy ones she had now. They just needed some calibration data. So they had inserted a sensor into her prosthetics, given her a gym routine, and now here she was, in Frankford’s Leisure Centre, passively lifting weights in a baking hot room with Sora and Sham along for the ride.

She is enjoying a workout, though. Just not hers. Sora’s, on the other hand, she’s enjoying more than is comfortable, or morally permissible.

A little more than a year ago, she and Sora had had a boxing match here – to test her prosthetics, ironically enough. It was a good day out; there had been sports, derring-do, ice cream, and she had basically adopted a cat at the end of it, although Sora had also almost put her in traction. At the time, she had felt… stirrings, here and there, of an attraction that was more far more physical than what had come before. But it was manageable. She’d been in control of the situation.

The situation has changed.

In the past year or so, she’s accepted that Sora is special to her in a way that is not particularly platonic. If somebody asked her right now, “When did you fall in love with Sora?”, she wouldn’t answer. But the answer, she has realised, exists, and now she’s trying to figure out what to do about it. In the meantime, her new perception of her friend – as somebody she desires, who is desirable, and who may have desires of her own – has quietly begun to cause trouble.

It would have been fine, she thinks, if Sora hadn’t chosen to wear skintight exercise clothes. Sora at rest is soft and doughy and loveable, a puffy cloud of a person who wanders hither and thither in long dresses and whose train of thought doesn’t turn at the signal. Sora in motion is an entirely different beast. When she moves, there are glimpses of something – a sense that under her peaceful exterior, there is something lithe and fierce and powerful stretching after a long sleep, and Nath likes it. She doesn’t necessarily want to like it, at least not as obviously as she does, but on a very primal level, the idea of an active Sora reaches into some very interesting parts of her and gives them a bit of a tickle.

Sora, in motion and in skintight clothing, is actually just cheating in Nath’s humble opinion. Mankind was not meant to have access to Sora’s pure, unrefined silhouette. You’re not supposed to be able to imagine her butt in glorious detail, or all the very enjoyable things you could do with such a butt if given access to it. But Nath is. She can’t not. She doesn’t know how on earth Sham is dealing with it, or why everybody else in the gym is not openly salivating the way she’s afraid she might be, but personally speaking it’s been very hard to focus on her reps with the knowledge that Sora is exercising and in the same room as her.

Sham doesn’t know any of this. Or, if she does, she’s hiding it. The expression painted on her face is concern, pure and simple. “I don’t know, Sora… I’ve never seen her go red like this before.”

“I have.”

“Really? When?”

Mercifully, Sora doesn’t answer, and instead starts her exercises again. Nobody is more excited about their day at the gym than her. Nath came out of obligation; Sham, whose ability to fill herself with snacks is no longer being counteracted by the calorie burn of an idol routine, came out of prudence. Sora is here for the sheer joy of exercise. She’s been left adrift in a body capable of things no modern athlete can ever hope to match, and no way to stretch herself. Even hard exercise is a poor substitute for the rush of combat, but it’s something.

Suguri and Hime have given her a perfect, peaceful life; she loves her garden, her ducks, and her friends. But Nath can tell she’s missing something. There are parts of her that are still asleep; they are dangerous, but they’re her. She needs to express them, but she can’t. Suguri and Hime won’t let her play-fight, at least not often; she’s too boisterous, too excitable, too competitive. Too uncontrolled. It’s hard to argue with them. They are old, and wise, and responsible for the people around them; give Sora another year or two to calm down, they say, and then she can play all she wants.

It’s the sensible way to handle things. But lately, Nath wonders if it’s the correct one. Suguri and Hime have the wisdom of ancients. A year or two is nothing to them, in the grand scheme of things. But for Sora, a year is a year. Time does not elide for her the way it does for her friends. In the meantime, she is frustrated, yearning for something she cannot reach. More and more, Nath finds herself wanting to do something about it. She just isn’t sure what. Time has quite effectively dis-armed her; even if she wanted to play with Sora in the sky, she no longer has the weapons.

All that can wait for another day. A day that’s not roasting hot. A day where the profile of Sora’s ass hasn’t been seared into her mind for future enjoyment, and she can do anything without feeling like a giant barrel of sweat and hormones. For now, she needs a cold drink, and a chance to cool off in other ways. After reassuring Sham with a clumsy pat on the head, she retreats to the comfort (and relative coolness) of the vending machines.

“Nath. Are you sure you’re okay?”

She looks up and Sora is staring down at her, her hair shaggy and her skin glowing with exertion. There is a certain sense of satisfaction in her stance, even as she furrows her brow. It must be nice to get that much enjoyment out of something as simple as lifting weights.

With only a small sigh, Nath hauls herself to her feet. She’s been sitting next to the vending machine, enjoying the feeling of the cool wall against her back. Nobody’s been for drinks in almost ten minutes; she feels cooler, calmer, and refreshed. “Yes. I’m good.”

“I was worried. You were gone for a while.”

“Couldn’t decide what I wanted.”

Sora looks at her face and narrows her eyes. “I bet… you want an iced tea.”

“These vending machines don’t sell iced tea.”

“But you want one.”

“Well, I do now, because you’ve said it.”

“See?” Sora folds her arms, pleased with the results of her prognostication. “We can go out for iced tea when we’re done. I’ll treat you.”

Nath smiles wryly. Sora gets an allowance from Suguri every month, and guards it jealously. Functionally it is limitless, because if she ever needed more Suguri would give it to her, but she never does. Instead she keeps to that one figure as if it were set in stone, and as if her friends were not living off ten thousand years of accumulated wealth and interest. To receive an iced tea from her is (supposedly) a great honour, because that money was earmarked for more important things, like notebooks with bears on them. She’s begun collecting them, with the aim of getting one with every kind of bear.

Knowing that Sora won’t go back until she’s picked a drink, Nath lazily scans the selection and picks something that claims to taste of sour apple. As she quickly checks she doesn’t need any of the coins she’s spending for her collection, she feels Sora’s hand slip into hers.

For a moment, they are both still.

“Sora… you okay?” Nath asks. There is… something in the air. Like a soap bubble she’s trying not to pop. Sora stands at her left shoulder, and she can see the top of the girl’s head out of the corner of her eye. It feels like it would be wrong to look directly at her face.

“Muu.” It’s been a while since Nath heard that noise – Sora’s little nonsense sound for when she’s frustrated, or searching for what to say. “You’re getting new hands soon, right?”

“Well… fingers crossed.”

“So there’s not a lot of time left to hold these ones.” A pause. “It’s a rare opportunity.”

‘A rare opportunity’… She’s heard Sora say those words before. Last time they visited the leisure centre. At the time, Sora had wanted to hold hands as they went for ice cream after the fight, but she’d made an excuse not to. Sora… hadn’t tried again, after that.

The hand in hers is warm, rough with calluses from gardening and weapons training. A little sweaty, too. But it’s Sora’s, and this time, she’ll take what she can get. She squeezes gently. “You know you can hold my hand any time you like, right?”

A longer pause. “Is it okay?”

“Yes.”

“…I’m holding you to it,” Sora says, and squeezes back. Something squirms pleasantly in Nath’s stomach. Her cheeks feel warm, so maybe she’s blushing. But it’s a warm day to start with, so maybe not. Best not to think about it. She finally rolls her coin into the slot of the vending machine, and there is a satisfying clunk as it hits. “Oh, Nath. Also.”

“Mm?”

“You were staring a whole lot in the gym.”

After mere seconds of feeling happy and relaxed, Nath suddenly feels sweat breaking out on her forehead again.

“I don’t mind,” Sora continues, “but you should be careful. You’ll make Sham jealous.”

“Because I was staring at you?”

“Because you weren’t staring at her.”

“…Right. Noted,” Nath replies. If that’s what it takes to make Sham jealous, she worries how jealous she’ll be when they walk back into the gym holding hands (and, in her case, blushing. Or not blushing. It’s Schroedinger's blush, which both exists and doesn’t exist until she observes it).

But even if she’s blushing like a proverbial maiden, Nath has been around for a while. She might not have all the answers, but she knows which questions to ask. So when they get back to the gym, she keeps staring – at Sora’s face, this time, rather than any of the more exotic body parts on offer. More specifically, at her eyes, and where they were pointing. Mostly – almost exclusively, in fact – they’re glued to Nath’s thighs.

She had wondered how Sora figured out she’d been staring. It turns out she wasn’t the only one.

A/N: Rated for mentions of LEWD hand-holding and THIGHS.